Open Access
Tuesday, February 12, 2008 Filed in: Weekly Tip
Open format Timelines is one of our favorite features in Final Cut Pro 6. They become particularly useful when you need to integrate SD footage into an HD show. However, you need to make sure a couple of options are set up correctly.
- Open up User Preferences by pressing Option + Q.
- Choose the Editing tab and in the lower right-hand corner make sure Always scale clips to sequence size is checked. With this box checked, Final Cut Pro will scale your SD footage to the HD frame but it will not distort the aspect ratio. The result will be a blown up pillar boxed image.
- Open up your sequence settings by choosing Sequence > Settings or Command + 0 and choose the Video Processing tab.
- Change the
Motion Filtering Quality pulldown to Best. This
ensures Final Cut Pro will scale your SD clip
using the highest quality. Click OK.
If, for whatever reason, you did not have the Always scale clips to sequence size checked in your User Preferences you would have ended up with your SD image centered in the HD frame as a small box. Don’t worry though, you can fix this.
- Select the SD clip you want to scale.
- Choose Modify > Scale to Sequence.
- The clip’s
scale has automatically been adjusted to fit the
HD frame size.
While the scale to sequence method can be very helpful in working with SD footage in HD projects, scaling is happening (potentially a lot) so expect some degradation of the footage.
Note: Be wary of the Conform to Sequence command also found in the Modify menu. This command will adjust not only scale, but also aspect ratio possibly resulting in a stretched SD image if you conformed to an HD sequence. Conform to Sequence will also adjust field dominance by applying a Shift Fields filter if needed.
Like this tip? It comes from the book
Final Cut Studio On the Spot from Focal Press.